“Non-Linear” Services Models

3 years ago, Chandran Sankaran wrote a “Real Deal” guest blog on next-gen BPO when he started Zyme Solutions. It is good to see he has been executing on his vision and that IIM Bangalore, a reputed business school, has written a case study on his business model.

I extracted a few of Chandran’s comments from that document which focuses on non-linear ( not tied to chargeable hours) growth in services - the document can be ordered by emailing : dvrs AT iimb.ernet.in

“As we have seen from the explosion of outsourcing, there is a lot of work to be found in this model, but it comes at a price—the need to constantly hire and train ever-larger workforces, and the need to combat rising costs and increasing commoditization and price pressure at the customer interface. Down this path, once you have hired 10,000 people, you now need to keep that machine fed—which means you must find any work you can to feed the machine.

It is really hard for such a company to transform itself from a linear, people driven business to one that isn’t. Of course it can be done, but it will take sustained, visionary leadership from the top against all sorts of near-term growth pressure to pull it off.

We started Zyme at a different stage in the services industry life cycle. We saw the writing on the wall for the traditional services business models, and we had the luxury of making different choices from a clean slate. Early in Zyme’s life, I wrote a piece in a blog that laid out some of these choices. We have stuck with that vision. We have become a specialist with a non-linear, platform based, business model, and we chose a big market and problem area where we have the opportunity to build a large company over time.”

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“Non-Linear” Services Models

3 years ago, Chandran Sankaran wrote a “Real Deal” guest blog on next-gen BPO when he started Zyme Solutions. It is good to see he has been executing on his vision and that IIM Bangalore, a reputed business school, has written a case study on his business model.

I extracted a few of Chandran’s comments from that document which focuses on non-linear ( not tied to chargeable hours) growth in services - the document can be ordered by emailing : dvrs AT iimb.ernet.in

“As we have seen from the explosion of outsourcing, there is a lot of work to be found in this model, but it comes at a price—the need to constantly hire and train ever-larger workforces, and the need to combat rising costs and increasing commoditization and price pressure at the customer interface. Down this path, once you have hired 10,000 people, you now need to keep that machine fed—which means you must find any work you can to feed the machine.

It is really hard for such a company to transform itself from a linear, people driven business to one that isn’t. Of course it can be done, but it will take sustained, visionary leadership from the top against all sorts of near-term growth pressure to pull it off.

We started Zyme at a different stage in the services industry life cycle. We saw the writing on the wall for the traditional services business models, and we had the luxury of making different choices from a clean slate. Early in Zyme’s life, I wrote a piece in a blog that laid out some of these choices. We have stuck with that vision. We have become a specialist with a non-linear, platform based, business model, and we chose a big market and problem area where we have the opportunity to build a large company over time.”